GI Boys and Bondage

The scene was so hideous, so wrong, that my only consolation was a hope that no one would see it.

I had been wandering the deserted, labyrinthine hallways on the third floor at Union Station when I noticed an eerie green glow in an alcove up ahead. Disturbed and intrigued at the same time, I approached it, only to discover that the chartreuse luminescence was coming from the face of a mannequin -- a mannequin whose entire head was a futuristic, round video projection unit, despite the fact that she was dressed in a white, floor-length, World War I-era Red Cross dress and blue veil.

Then she started talking. She was ostensibly addressing another mannequin nearby, this one meant to be a handsome soldier in olive drabs, leaning toward her over a wooden counter, his eyes aimed vaguely in her direction.

"Don't worry, private, I'm a whiz at sewing buttons," the voice said from inside the Red Cross mannequin's face as her internal video player beamed some unfortunate actress's facial expressions against the inside of the mannequin's white, ill-sculpted head. She chattered on about her sewing skills and women's rights. He was apparently unmoved -- his fixed smile made him look happy to be getting any gal's attention, no matter what she was yammering about.

Off to the right, another female mannequin looked ghostly in her long, white dress with its blood-red cross; thankfully, her blue veil obscured her oddly masculine face as she dangled an empty, white coffee cup in front of a seated soldier-mannequin. He leaned precariously forward and seemed to grab at the cup, though his eyes gazed off to the side and his mouth hung open as if he were about to start drooling. The poor guy was disconcertingly pale under his Andy Warhol hair.

The people who'd put up this display probably hadn't meant to depict shell-shock, but there it was. Also unfortunate was the African-American mannequin. He was dressed in blue Navy woolens, and he held a white duffel bag. But he was way off to the side, which made him seem more like a laundry boy than a heroic sailor; and he was strangely short, reminiscent of a lawn jockey. I'm just sayin' what I saw.

The horrific scenario is called "Candy, Coffee and a Smile." It's inflicted upon unlucky Union Station visitors by the same people who run the Liberty Memorial Museum -- memorabilia collectors who have long complained about how they've amassed 400,000 artifacts but don't have nearly enough room to properly exhibit them in the measly museum space surrounding the massive concrete shaft rising above Penn Valley Park. So here, across the street from the Liberty Memorial, resides a little satellite diorama in front of windows facing south toward the memorial itself.

Informational posters explained that a steady stream of soldiers and sailors had actually visited the Red Cross information booth at Union Station back during the war to get their buttons sewed on, throw back hot cups of joe and ask for directions to the YMCA. But that didn't make the whole thing right.

At least no one would see it up there, I was reminding myself. Then I heard a snicker behind me just as the video mannequin's audio loop started up again. A woman who'd wandered into the alcove was laughing at the bizarre sight. "It's a little frightening," said her male companion. I'd seen them earlier, exploring the cavernous station and checking out its curiosities; they looked like visiting Nebraskans. And they thought this thing was freakin' weird, too.

Seeking a professional opinion, I went downstairs, where I'd seen a friend who is high up in the local history community. He'd never seen this particular piece of work and was stunned by its archaism. It went totally against all of the current thinking on how museum displays should be put together, he said. Walking back downstairs through the echoing terrazzo passageways, he sounded disillusioned.

"What's wrong with this town?" he asked.

Hey -- nothing that wasn't being fixed that very minute!

Every Kansas Citian asks himself or herself, What's wrong with this town? several times a day, at least, but this was Election Day, and everything was about to get better. For once, Union Station was swarming. (OK, dozens of people were enjoying buffet food, a cash bar and a cover band in front of the food court, though the rest of the station's vast emptiness dwarfed them.) These were the supporters of last Tuesday's Question No. 1, which asked citizens to approve $250 million in general-obligation bonds to repair the city's disintegrating roads, bridges and sewers, and the crowd who had pushed Question No. 2, another $30 million in bonds to fix up the zoo. Weirdly, the folks behind Question No. 3, seeking to approve yet another $20 million in bonds for a museum at the Liberty Memorial, were keeping to themselves, staying up on a balcony above the station's incongruous Union Café. Every once in a while, the Back to Basics crew and the Friends of the Zoo on the ground level would hear clapping from above; occasionally, the crowd on the floor would cheer, and the VFW and Ladies Auxiliary types would peek down from over the upstairs railing.